I have a horrifying and shameful secret to reveal: sometimes when I eat spicy food my tum tum hurts. There used to be a time when I was known as “The Cast-Iron Stomach” and could eat a whole platter of Buffalo Calamari with a side of jalapenos any time of day without a second thought, but those days are long over. Now if I want to think about eating nachos after 8 pm I better have some Tums ready because my guts are going to be an acid bath. I thought they’d be ok if I went to The Compass Tavern for lunch, but then I saw their nachos.

If you were to name a city in honor of someone named John Mason, you would think it would be called Masonville, Masonburg, Masontown, or something along those lines. However in New Hampshire they called it Portsmouth, because Mason had been the captain of the port of Portsmouth, England, in the county Hampshire, which is where the state got its name. It seems more likely that Mason was a bit of a dick and nobody really wanted to name the city after him so they made up an elaborate lie about how Portsmouth totally is based off of him, I swear. Anyhow, The Friendly Toast is a restaurant there, and that’s what we’re talking about today.

Every region of the united States has its own preferred version of, “Applebee's, but for Mexican food”. Cantina Mariachi, Chi-Chi's, Chilis, Don Pablo's, El Fenix, El Torito, On The Border, all these meet that definition in casual Mexican dining world. In New England we have Margaritas, and boy oh boy did I drink a lot of their namesake there in college. What I did not do though was sample their nachos with the same gusto, and that needed to be rectified.

During Christmas you thought up ahead and stocked up on bags of chips from whatever company makes red and green ones for the holiday. You were worried you'd have to go for some dark orange chips and say that they were red, but you were prepared. You've slowly been eating the green chips out of the bag, leaving only red ones for that special day with that special someone. You set your oven to broil and arrange the red chips into a heart, knowing that your special human will see it as both a sign of your love and a sign of your impending mortality via coronary issues thanks to eating too many nachos. You carefully place the cheese and jalapenos so as to not lose the the shape of the heart, but to also make sure that the fact that these ARE nachos is not forgotten, and place them in the oven. Your loved one arrives just as they finish cooking and the two of you sit down with a bottle of tequila and a bouquet of roses, eating, drinking, and making love for hours. This is true love. Happy Valentine's Day.

So here we are, Super Bowl Sunday, and you need to be making some nachos ASAP for your big ol' party tonight. Foolishly you did not pick up a copy of Recipes from the Nachonomicon, and no way is that going to get to you by tonight, so what are you going to do? Well if you have $1,296, want to eat 399,593 calories, or dip your chips in a plastic bin of dip, you can whip up a batch of the above nachos, or you can peruse the Epic Meal Time back catalogue below for something perhaps a little more reasonable to sup upon. It's up to you, but right here we have literally saved you dozens of clicks trying to compile all these! More time for Go Footballing!

I have a horrifying and shameful secret to reveal: sometimes when I eat spicy food my tum tum hurts. There used to be a time when I was known as “The Cast-Iron Stomach” and could eat a whole platter of Buffalo Calamari with a side of jalapenos any time of day without a second thought, but those days are long over. Now if I want to think about eating nachos after 8 pm I better have some Tums ready because my guts are going to be an acid bath. I thought they’d be ok if I went to The Compass Tavern for lunch, but then I saw their nachos.